“People are not stupid,” one wrote on Twitter in January. Many of them refer to him as “Darren,” a reference to a model of hyper-realistic baby doll that could be used in photo ops in place of a real baby. (Through her publicist, Beyoncé called those rumors “stupid, ridiculous and false.” Kardashian addressed the rumors about her on Instagram, with a naked photo of her pregnant body.) More recently, conspiracy theorists have decided that Meghan Markle faked the birth of her son, Archie. Before then, in 2011, the heady early years of social media produced the theory that Beyoncé faked being pregnant with Blue Ivy to cover up use of a surrogate the same speculation dogged Kim Kardashian’s second pregnancy in 2015. This was just two months before One Direction member Louis Tomlinson announced that he would be having a baby with a former fling, Briana Jungwirth-a child that has also been declared “fake” by bloggers on Tumblr, some of whom still reject the idea that he is Tomlinson’s real child, even now that he is 4 years old. Hunter and Cumberbatch’s first son was born in June 2015. “I want her to know that somebody knows what she’s doing.” “Even if it’s only on Tumblr, I want her to know that she’s not getting away with it,” she says warmly, as if sharing a family recipe. Such as when she tells me that she spotted cocaine stains on Hunter’s jumpsuit in a photo taken days after she “supposedly” gave birth, at a party for the opening of an Annie Leibovitz exhibition.
(I granted her request to use only her first name in this piece because, in the past, she’s received a threatening letter at her home address, and she says her personal information has been published online repeatedly.) Having spent her youth living in several southern states before moving to Nevada 20 years ago, she has a sugar-water southern accent that soaks normal conversation with charm but makes caustic accusations sound even more ominous. Patty works in the operations department of a mortgage company, but she hasn’t updated her LinkedIn page in years, because she doesn’t want people on Tumblr contacting her current employer.
And I’m asking her this question because, for the past five years, Patty has been one of the most prolific and well-known Tumblr bloggers making the case that Benedict Cumberbatch’s wife, Sophie Hunter, is a criminal, who has been blackmailing him for years to stay in a sham marriage. So I’m sitting in a coffee shop near her house in Reno, Nevada, just a few days before the coronavirus started closing businesses like these.
(“Nothing personal,” she assured me-he deals with highly sensitive information at his job.) Her husband, she wrote to me a few days before we met in person, would not be allowing me to come into their home, in case I hacked his computer. She is 49, and has a 15-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old grandson. I first knew Patty as “Gatorfisch,” her username since 2013 on Tumblr, where she goes for photos of cute animals and discussions of liberal politics, among other things. Then she blushes, as she does each time something cracks her up but doesn’t register with me as funny. We call them Pillow One, Two, and Three.” She laughs again. “Oh, pillow,” Patty laughs, once she realizes what I’m looking at. On my first try, I pronounce it “peel-oh” and get a confused look in response, so I spell it out instead.
“Why do some of these blogs refer to Benedict Cumberbatch’s children as … Pilo?” I ask, reading from a Tumblr post on my phone.
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